This year I avoided the emission of more than a tonne of carbon dioxide – more likely 1,500 kilograms – by simply taking the train on various occasions like business or leisure trips.

Fast trains in France – like the TGV on the left – are powered by electricity, which is 90% low carbon. Relatively reliable, it is a pleasure to use them and work while going at 360 km/h. (200mph)

Thus, using public transportation systems fights climate change. Decreasing CO2 emissions is easy, we will see it with my Towards Sustainability series.

Transportation is one of the main greenhouse gases emissions contributor of our economies.

We now have to choose to use low emissions transportation means. Marguerite, once again, provides us with interesting data on that matter. In her article The curse of air travel, she proposes us an interesting graph :

As you can see, trains with non fossil electricity (88 percent of the French electricity is low carbon) emit much less than cars or worse trains.

I hope you enjoyed this post as it enables you to see that each and everyone of use can make a difference in the fight against global warming.

4 thoughts on “I avoided a tonne of CO2 emissions this year”

When I lived in the Pacific Northwest we would frequently take the bus to and from Seattle to avoid the traffic, parking fees and cause less CO2 emissions. Now that I live in southern Arizona public transportation options are few and far between. The best I can do is combine errands and carpool with a friend when traveling to Tucson. Bravo for taking the train! I would love to have that as an option. ~ Daryl

Rather than talking of avoiding emissions, I think it’s more useful to talk of the emissions you actually caused. After all, I could boast that since I didn’t go mad gambling one night at the casino I avoided spending a million dollars this year. Am I rich now? You can only know if I tell you my income and my spending.

What was your greenhouse gas income, and what was your spending? What did you do to absorb greenhouse gases, and what did you do to emit them? Of course you need not go to the trouble of making a carbon account anymore than I need to try to balance my chequebook. But if you don’t, then boasting of “avoiding” emissions or spending is meaningless.

Marguerite’s graph didn’t show up. Usually simply linking to images on blogs doesn’t work, you have to host the image yourself.

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About Edouard

An experienced energy and sustainability professional, Edouard helps organizations and companies save on their utilities and cut their carbon emissions. Fascinated about climate change solutions, he has been writing about related topics since 2004. Learn out more.